Congratulations @Mobute

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About

Congratulations @Mobute is a Twitter joke in which people congratulate journalist and prominent Weird Twitter user Jeb Lund (@Mobute) for various accomplishments he has not achieved.

Origin

In January of 2014, Lund orchestrated a hoax in which he convinced some that he had been hired by political blog Slate as a blogger.^[1] On the 23rd, he tweeted "I am just so honored and overwhelmed to be @Slate's first candidate to field a general blogger role. It is humbling and exciting."^[2]

Unaware Lund was not sincere, Mediabistro linked to his tweet for their Revolving Door newsletter, which reports on new hires by media outlets.^[1] This led to confusion as to whether or not Lund had actually been hired, which Lund contributed to by continuing to tweet as though he had been hired by Slate (ex: shown below).

On June 9th, Twitter user and Vice politics editor Harry Cheadle^[3] referenced the moment by congratulating Mobute for joining Libertarian blog Reason, which he wasn't (shown below). This marked the first "Congratulations @Mobute" joke.

Spread

In the coming months, more Twitter users began jokingly congratulating Lund whenever a major hire was announced in various industries. On July 2nd, 2015, Gawker^[4] wrote an article about the spread of the jokes, pretending to take all of the "Congratulations @Mobute" tweets seriously. The joke continues to be popular on Twitter as of May 22nd, 2017.^[5]